A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  “That’s tough.”

  “Yeah, they’ll be too vigilant there. What if we get inside before Wednesday and are already there when the money arrives,” I said.

  “I thought of that but when? You don’t get back until Monday afternoon and by then Escalera and his guys will already be there.”

  “So let’s do it Monday afternoon, which is enough time to ensure that the Wednesday morning exchange will be canceled and the mule will be safe.”

  “We’re not sure the money will be there remember?”

  “Right, sorry.”

  “C’mon stay with me.”

  “Tired,” I said. I closed my eyes and lay on the sofa. For minutes there were no words until Dane spoke:

  “I think that coming in from the top, either from the roof or the third-floor fire escape is our best option. It gives us the most time in the house and in proximity of the money without the entire crew knowing what’s going on.”

  “Assuming the entirety will ever know.”

  “Right, our job is to minimize the people who are aware of our presence and in that way attempt to deal with the disparity in numbers.”

  “Yes, and as a backup I think we should explore ways in which we might be able to create the illusion of greater numbers on our part.”

  “Nice, now you’re awake,” he lit a cigarette and exhaled as if an important segment was behind us. “So correct me if I’m wrong but it seems we’ve agreed we have to go in around three from either the roof or the fire escape.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And we agree we’ll leave the drugs alone.”

  I said nothing.

  “We agree we’ll leave that heavy, impractical chest, whose contents will be spread all over a room containing five armed protectors on a floor we don’t even have to enter to acquire our money, alone. Alone.”

  I looked away and at the window, only I couldn’t see through the window and to the outside for the condensation. Visibility was poor.

  “Forget the drugs right?”

  “ . . .”

  “Right?”

  “Let’s go on with the plan, we don’t have to decide everything all at once.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And I don’t think the fire escape is going to work either,” I said. “For one thing, it’s on the front of the building where anybody on the street can see. If it was on the back facing that little yard they have, that would be a different story. Also it leads into the main room of the floor where The Whale is likely to be waiting or at the very least where you would expect him to spot us immediately, not good. Again if it led into some minor forgotten part of the floor it would be a far more attractive option.”

  “Which takes us to the roof entrance.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Which gives every indication of leading into precisely the kind of minor, hidden area you’re talking about.”

  “Yes,” I said. “At least judging from the video.” (Dane had obtained, from what he assured me was an untraceable computer source, a video of a virtual tour of 410 from when it was briefly on the market six months earlier.)

  “So consequently you say roof.”

  “Yes, I think we can come down and out that door into that little alcove and gather there before Ballena or Whale or whatever has the slightest idea what’s about to hit him.”

  “I agree. It’s a strange kind of roof access for a residence, lucky for us.”

  “Yeah if it was the kind of thing where we had to drop one of those crazy attic ladders or something that would make it a lot more difficult that’s for sure.”

  “So there you have it. This will actually be easy the more I think about it.”

  “Whoa, I wouldn’t go that far. There’s still the problem of getting past the two roof guys before we even get to that alcove right?”

  “Right and twice since we’ll likely plan on leaving through the roof as well.”

  “So?” I said.

  “So, Casi, I think it’s a reasonable assumption to make that of the two guys on the roof one will be watching the front, the other the rear. And we know they will have point to point radios to communicate with the other guys if necessary, should they see police or anything else suspicious. Now as an initial matter it would seem we have to get on that roof from one of the two adjacent roofs.”

  “There’s no gap right?”

  “No gap on either side but there is one critical difference. 410 faces north right? Well the building on its east side is taller than 410 while the building to the immediate west is shorter. I think we need to come over from the taller building to the east for two reasons. First, we’re going to have to be on one of the adjacent rooftops sometime before three and obviously we don’t want to be seen. Well it’s going to be a lot easier to avoid being seen by people who are below us than by those above us looking down. Second, we’re going to want to have as easy a journey from rooftop to rooftop as possible and from the rooftop to the east we will have the help of our friend gravity. So I think we need to come from the east, from 408 specifically. Now as luck would have it, there’s an abandoned building three doors down from 408 at 402 East 123rd Street.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m telling you it’s fate. The building is all boarded up and is fairly impenetrable save for a side door to the basement that takes you up to what used to be the kitchen and if you keep going up from there you can get to the roof in a manner similar to 410.”

  “There’s no gap between 408 and 410, what about between 402 and 408?”

  “One gap, between 406 and 408. Maybe eight feet, we can deal with it.”

  “How?”

  “Obviously we still need to create a lot of details but before we do that let me give you, in general, what I propose.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I will make a key to that door at 402. Sometime prior to next Wednesday, I will use that key to go into that building and leave everything we need to do the heist. I’ll leave the swords, the radios, the clothing, everything so it’s waiting for us that night. On that night we go to 402. We take the swords. We go up to the roof. We cross, cross, cross until we get to 408.”

  “What about the gap?”

  “A ladder, pole vault whatever.”

  “What-vault?”

  “Pole.”

  “I don’t even know what that could possibly mean.”

  “Like I said, we’ll get to the details later. To continue, when the time is right we jump down to the roof of 410 from 408. We go down the staircase and out to the second floor. We deal with Ballena and take the bag without allowing him to notify the others. We go back up to the roof, all the way across back to 402, back down to the basement, out the side door and home with our money. Any questions?”

  “Many. Are all of the buildings from 402 to 408 the same height.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Except for the gap we can practically fly between 410 and 402.”

  “I hate the gap.”

  “Fuck the gap, no big deal.”

  “So how do we get to 402? How do we get out of there when we’re done?

  “We have to decide that.”

  “How do we get past those two guys on the roof twice?”

  “We have to figure that out as well but what do you think about the plan in general?”

  “I think it’s good, or at least our best bet, but our success seems really contingent on the accuracy of DeLeon’s information, to a degree I’m not entirely comfortable with.”

  “How so?”

  “Well for example, how do we know that Ballena will be the only guy on the second floor? That’s a huge issue too. It seems to me you would want more than one person protecting that kind of money.”

  “We know because you heard DeLeon. Escalera does it the same way every time and he’s not about to change now. Ballena is always alone in a separate, nearby location or room until they weigh and test the drugs. Then they radio him and
he brings the money over.”

  “But this is a big deal.”

  “But not a risky one from their perspective. The last thing they expect is a move on that money. From who? A guy about to get it anyway?”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am right, DeLeon’s right.”

  “So how do we get by the roof guys?

  “I think we might need to create a distraction.”

  “That’s the last thing I think we should do,” I said. “Any distraction we create artificially might have the opposite of the intended effect. If I’m sitting there all complacency and suddenly something out of the ordinary happens, the first thing I’m going to do is safeguard what’s at risk.”

  “That’s a risk, no doubt.”

  “On the other hand, we might have the perfect built-in distraction.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well what’s that house going to look like at exactly three a.m.? Think about it. At exactly that time the Nova will pull up to the garage. The north side roof guy at least will be watching the car from the roof to assure that it arrives alone and with only one occupant. The three guys in the basement will be watching the door open, checking the car, unloading the chest. The three on the second floor will first be looking out the window then waiting in anticipation for their cohorts to come up. In short, that seems as good a time as we’re going to get to go in there undetected.”

  “Not bad and what I like is that since we know Escalera is a stickler for time we can time it to a tee.”

  “Exactly. If we do it right, the first time Escalera will discover something has gone wrong is when he asks Ballena to bring down the dough. When do you think that will be?”

  “Well let’s think it through. Three o’clock she gets there. Couple of minutes to get the trunk out and bring it up the stairs. Now they unlock it, spread out its contents and begin the weighing and testing. Remember this is a lot of shit. It’s going to take a while to test it all. Remember also what DeLeon says about Escalera and testing. Escalera is thorough to the point of paranoia. He tests and weighs extensively from every portion of the shipment. This stems from an incident when he got beat, on a minor deal, because he only tested the top and bottom of the stuff and not the middle.”

  “What happened to his fascination with the middle?”

  “Maybe that was the genesis of it I don’t know.”

  “So lots of testing.”

  “Yes and Ballena will not be summoned until it is all complete”

  “Bottom line?”

  “I’ll say fifteen to twenty-five minutes.”

  “Those field tests are pretty quick.”

  “Yeah but it all has to be weighed and remember that every single portion is being tested. The unknown factor is how the stuff will be packaged. The more individual packages there are the longer the testing.”

  “Is there any way it could be less than fifteen minutes.”

  “No I don’t see how.”

  “So let’s assume the worst case scenario and say we have fifteen minutes to get in there, get the dough and get the hell out of that area before those guys flood the street looking for us.”

  “I think that’s right.”

  “So what have we established so far Dane?”

  “We’ve established that we’re going to use swords, that we’re going to begin at 402, that we’re going to enter 410 through the roof, that we’re going to exit through that same roof and go back to 402. Most importantly, I think we’ve also established that we are two avaricious, insane fucks who refuse to be marginalized by a society that exalts the acquisition of wealth above all else.”

  “Okay, I’ll take your word on that last one. That still leaves a lot left to decide. I’m thinking of these things. I made a list while you were talking:

  When do we get to 402?

  How do we get there?

  How do we leave the scene with the dough?

  How exactly do we get past the rooftop watchers?

  How do we deal with Ballena?

  How do we keep him from notifying the others in the house?

  Exactly how big is this guy that he warrants being called Whale yet isn’t fat?

  There it is off the top of my head. I’m flying Friday morning so between tonight and tomorrow we need to decide these questions to a high degree of certainty.”

  “No, to a perfect degree.”

  “So?”

  “So did you watch The Beastly Burden Channel at all today? They had this Kodiac bear—”

  “I don’t have cable.”

  “This fucking bear—”

  “As I’ve been saying, I think one of the keys is to minimize greatly the amount of time we’re engaged in clearly culpable conduct. For that reason, I think we should arrive at 402 as close to three a.m. as possible.”

  “Fine but given that the three o’clock time is a strict go time we don’t want to cut it too close either.”

  “Let’s say 2:30 at 402 meaning that an hour later we should be well on our way home with the dough.”

  “I like it Casi.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “How do you get anywhere in this city? Subway I guess.”

  “Subway might be okay for getting there but leaving there is still a getaway right? We’re going to make our getaway on the subway where any flatfoot can decide to ask us what’s in the bag?”

  “On what basis?”

  “So we’re going to rely on their understanding of and respect for the U.S. Constitution now?”

  “You should’ve seen this bear man.”

  “The getaway please.”

  “So we’ll drive, we’ll leave the car a couple blocks away.”

  “What car? Not mine obviously.”

  “Why not? You’ve said repeatedly that you want to minimize the length of innocently-inexplicable conduct. What’s more explicable than being in your own car?”

  “Let’s table it for now.”

  “Fine.”

  “Here’s the main thing. Focus on the time between when we’re on the roof of 408, say 2:58 a.m., until we get out of the side door of 402. How do we do that?”

  “Listen we do have a week. I don’t think too much of the plan should come together all at once. That seems dangerous to me, sloppy and precipitate. I mean we’ve got all day tomorrow. You’re not going to work tomorrow right?”

  “I’m not but we don’t have all day because I’m also meeting with Toomberg.”

  “I thought you were meeting with him tonight.”

  “Yes and tomorrow night as well.”

  “Man alive, you need to be entirely focused on this.”

  “I am. This isn’t brain surgery, I can do other things simultaneously. Besides you’re the one who wants to stop tonight, I want to keep going.”

  “That’s because I’ve given it a lot of thought and I think the planning stage of this, to be optimal, has to proceed at a certain pace. Perfection is never a matter of indiscriminately spending copious time. I’m fully confident that everything we’ve decided to this point is unequivocally correct but I would lose that confidence if we proceed too quickly. That’s so because once we decide something I never want to have to revisit it. That would not be a perfect allocation of time or mental resources. In these situations, things must develop at their proper rate, a delicate balance must be achieved, so that the participants, you and I, have just the right relationship to the plan.”

  My relationship to the plan was dysfunctional. Dane evinced so little doubt about its eventual efficacy, about its perfection and our ability and need to properly carry it out, that the whole thing became something more than real yet somehow still distant. If reality is sometimes so intense and bizarre that it feels like bad, unpersuasive fiction, then this was a fiction so powerful it outrealized reality. The whole thing scared me in a way that made me involuntarily cognizant of my every cardiopulmonary move; the ways a body keeps itself alive. I resolved to take two possibly wholly i
ncompatible steps in response. I wanted to throw every cell of my being into the formation of the plan but I thought I would eventually back out, maybe by intentionally creating some impediment. I had too much doubt, I thought, to successfully carry it out.

  “I think I need to keep working on this,” I said. “I don’t feel comfortable yet and Toom won’t be here for a while.”

  “All right we’ll break it down. It’s 2:59 a.m. and we’re on the roof of 408 immediately adjacent and above the roof to 410. Any problems to that point Casi?”

  “No there shouldn’t be any problem. By the time I get back from Alabama you’ll have left the stuff in 402 right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’ll be very careful doing so right?”

  “Naturally.”

  “What if some crackheads go in there to smoke or something and find our swords et cetera?”

  “I thought of that but no. The key I’m going to make is really the only easy way in there and I think that easy-way-ins are the only thing we have to worry about in this context.”

  “Are there any imminent plans, by the city or others, to deal with that abandoned building?”

  “No, six months and counting with no plans.”

  I had to give this to him. I don’t think Dane had ever answered I don’t know to any question that involved the acquisition of information.

  “And I never will,” he said. “Because all the homework is already done. The only thing left to do is some reasoning by our two brains and of course any factual research that may arise as a result.”

  “Okay so 2:59 now what?”

  “Seemingly two major options. We can allow Heckle and Jeckle on the roof to see us but somehow incapacitate them in such a way that they can neither stop us nor use their radios to notify the others of our presence or we can get on the roof and under without them detecting us. I don’t see any other option, do you?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s it going to be then, eh?”

  “You’re saying, Toom, that you saw no one as you were coming up?”

  “No one, why?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Have you been working?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think?”

  “I think I remember the day Gold was walking around looking for volunteers trumpeting unprecedented autonomy and priceless experience. Remember? He said there was this organization in Alabama that devoted itself to assisting death row prisoners and they were looking for attorneys willing to work pro bono. I think about how I really should have stayed seated in my swiveling chair but how instead I tracked him down and signed up on that little clipboard he was carrying. I think about how even though that happened months ago, It wasn’t until last week, with the literal deadline approaching, that I truly understood the enormity of what I’d agreed to.”